A pair of Bridgeport residents checks out the new City of Bridgeport-owned driveway recently completed to access the waterfront home of Mark IV Construction owner Manuel Moutinho, on Wednesday, June 5, 2013.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

The entrance off Sniffens Lane in Stratford to the new City of Bridgeport-owned driveway recently completed to access the waterfront home of Mark IV Construction owner Manuel Moutinho, on Wednesday, June 5, 2013.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

Filled in marsh along the side of the new City of Bridgeport-owned driveway recently completed to access the waterfront home of Mark IV Construction owner Manuel Moutinho, on Wednesday, June 5, 2013.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

A new City of Bridgeport-owned driveway was recently completed to access the waterfront home of Mark IV Construction owner Manuel Moutinho in Stratford on Wednesday, June 5, 2013.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

An Airport security vehicle patrols the new City of Bridgeport-owned driveway recently completed to access the waterfront home of Mark IV Construction owner Manuel Moutinho, on Wednesday, June 5, 2013.
Photo: Brian A. Pounds

"Manny has a capacity for being tough and a best friend at the same time," Ricci said in a profile of Moutinho's work as a contractor and developer, published 27 years ago in The Bridgeport Post.

At the time, Ricci, a former mayoral aide, was selling housing units for Moutinho.

"He managed to have each year in his business better than the last, regardless of conditions," Ricci was quoted as saying. "He's not interested in sports and has no vices. All he does is work."

Four years later, Ricci was managing Bridgeport-owned Sikorsky Memorial Airport, located in Stratford. On Wednesday, Mayor Bill Finch suspended Ricci with pay from that $94,000 job, pending an investigation into Ricci's role in hiring Moutinho to build a $400,000 gravel driveway through airport property.

The 1,000-foot-long, 20-foot-wide access way serves three other properties, but ends at Moutinho's million-dollar Long Island Sound mansion on Stratford's shoreline.

The administration had insisted the project was necessary to allow the city to move ahead with a $40 million runway safety upgrade mostly funded by the federal government. Ricci said he helped broker the deal with Moutinho, who had already obtained permits to build and pay for the driveway himself when Bridgeport took over.

The mayor -- a student of Bridgeport politics who by the 1980s was marching in the city streets protesting President Ronald Reagan -- said he only learned of Ricci's and Moutinho's close relationship Wednesday. That's when Hearst Connecticut Newspapers, which on Monday broke the story of the $400,000 driveway, approached the mayor with some 2012 property transactions between Ricci and Moutinho.

Hearst asked what the administration knew.

"Today is the first time we have been made aware of any such alleged association," Finch said.

But just a few blocks from Finch's downtown office, records stored with the town clerk detail that as Moutinho built his empire and Ricci his municipal pension, the two remained in each other's orbit through the years.

In November 1986, Ricci purchased property at 444 Catherine St. from Moutinho for $75,000.

In the late 1980s, Moutinho's Mark IV Construction performed $93,000 worth of work for Ricci's Coggswell Square Condominiums. Mark IV is the same company Ricci, with the approval of Finch's legal staff, hired to build the driveway for Moutinho and three neighboring property owners.

By February 1994, Ricci and Moutinho were co-defendants. Ricci and Mark IV were named in a lawsuit filed by Brilco Mortgage Fund Inc., involving a $170,000 mortgage for 90 Coggswell St.

By 2010, Ricci was doing business with Moutinho's son, Eric, who was operating through Baldwin Station LLC. Baldwin Station and Mark IV share an address -- 1137 Seaview Ave. In November of that year, Ricci sold Baldwin Station 76 Porter St. for $65,000.

In January 2011, one of Ricci's limited liability corporations, CIMA Contractors, sold 1240 Brooklawn Ave. to Moutinho for $100,000.

A year later, in February 2012, Ricci sold 1483-89 Boston Ave. to Moutinho for $150,000.

That June -- roughly the time city officials said they were planning Moutinho's driveway -- Moutinho sold 1491-97 Boston Ave. to Ricci for $220,000.

Ricci has also had dealings over the years with Moutinho associates, some of whom have links to organized crime.

According to files with the Office of State Liquor Control, for a brief period from November 2004 to August 2005, Ricci held the bar permit for JR's Bijou Cafe at 269 Fairfield Ave. He, according to liquor control, sold his interest to Joseph Regensberger.

Regensberger owns, with partner Julia Kish, some city strip clubs. Kish is the wife of Gus Curcio, who has been linked in federal documents to organized crime.

Moutinho and Curcio -- who the FBI claims is associated with the Genevese Crime Family -- are named in a number of the same lawsuits pending in state Superior Court. The FBI has also targeted Moutinho as part of a probe into sewer construction in Trumbull. The town claims Moutinho's work was defective. Trumbull and the developer are suing each other.

According to the Bridgeport assessor's office, some of the Boston Avenue properties Moutinho sold to Ricci a year ago, Moutinho had purchased from Kish's Bridgeport Redevelopment Inc.

Kish also, according to Office of State Liquor Control documents, at one time operated the Wings bar by Sikorsky Airport on Great Meadow Road in Stratford. Kish's partner was Robin Cummings. Moutinho, in August 2000, sold Cummings 2440 and 2428 North Ave., Bridgeport for $150,000.

Despite his current troubles, if Ricci has proven anything during his long tenure in Bridgeport government, it is that he is survivor who has continued to hold a job while mayors come and go.

Ricci's career dates back to at least the mid-1970s, when he was the city's traffic and transportation engineer. In the 1980s, he traded in road planning for political maneuvering as top aide to Mayor Leonard Paoletta.

Ricci resigned in disgrace. He had been arrested in June 1983 on 32 felony counts for allegedly receiving and spending a $1,000 cash contribution to Paoletta's 1981 campaign. Like Finch on Wednesday, Paoletta suspended Ricci with pay.

A Superior Court judge in May 1984 granted Ricci accelerated rehabilitation, ordering him to resign as Paoletta's aide, pay a $5,000 civil penalty, avoid politics for two years and serve two years' probation.

"Nothing went into his pocket; it was all campaign expenses," he said. "You've got a technical violation. What I'm saying is the system made him a crook. It's a stupid rule. I felt that way then and I feel that way now."